| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War. By K. Scott Wong. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. 256 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-674-01671-8.)
Americans First by K. Scott Wong explores the impact of World War II on Chinese Americans. As one of the relatively few scholarly treatments of the Chinese American experience during this time period, it provides a welcome addition to Asian American history.	1
The book, filled with lively oral histories, is informative. The first three chapters describe what life was like for Chinese living in the United States in the pre–World War II era, how wartime shortages of labor provided young Chinese men and women new opportunities previously unavailable to them, and how a U.S.-China alliance helped improve the image of Chinese Americans. Chapter 4 is an interesting account of the Chinese in Hawaii, a subject many scholars have overlooked. The comparison between the Hawaiian Chinese and those who grew up on the mainland reveals how different historical circumstances and regional variations shaped race relations in complex ways. Chapter 5 is the first scholarly analysis of the Fourteenth Air Service Group (ASG), an all–Chinese American military unit in World War II. The final chapter examines changes after the war that allowed Chinese Americans to integrate into mainstream American life.	. . .

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